Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2015 08:47:37 -0700
Reply-To: Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Oil coolers...The stock ones, are they all the same?
In-Reply-To: <BAY405-EAS2382283BFDA0CE594D32ABCA0540@phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
The leak I found in my cooler is a result of a long section of pipe
being in direct contact with the side of my cooler for about 3yrs now. It
wore an actual diviot, which finally reached through the cooler into the
coolant inside...When I fill the coolant bottle, a tiny geyser comes up
about an inch, right out of the side of the heat exchanger (oil cooler)...
The vehicle we're talking about has the Jetta motor on the factory
diesel bars, sitting over at 50 degrees, which let that pipe section lay,
with gravity's help, right down, lightly, against the cooler...In the
Jetta car, with the motor upright, I suppose that pipe is not sagging down
against the side of the cooler, so no problem. I will suspend the next
one without contact there.
I guess the inline VW motors and the WBX must have a different tolerance
for abuse, I ran my original 1.8 liter inline from PDX to Mexico and back
with my leaking headgasket, the one mentioned in another post, the one I
think I caused myself by being unfamiliar with the behavior of the Vanagon
Cooling System...(."Counterintuitive...") I doubt I'd have been able to
do that with a WBX motor...Luckily, my "plan b" of "if she blows while I'm
out on the road, I'll just stop at the nearest junkyard and get another
$300 rabbit motor and stick that in the van"....that didn't happen....
Then when I got back from that trip in two months,(about 3500 miles) I
popped the head off and lapped it's surface on a pane of plate glass and
some emory cloth to "machine" the head before replacing that headgasket
with one that Techtonics Tuning sells. I am still running that one, and
there is no exhaust gas in the coolant or leaking, despite another 'mild
overheat' that just occurred....
The complexity of the 'circulatory system' of the Vanagon.... This
'mild over heat' incident still doesn't make much sense to me...Sure, low
coolant causes overheating, but I drove home almost 80 miles after topping
up the coolant reservoir and the radiator and never again had to add
coolant...I closely watched all the gauges and the motor's internals never
heated back up again...(Oil temperature stayed below 200f) The coolant must
have been sufficient to go 80 miles, but not the 190 miles I drove prior
to overheating in the morning of the same day..
.
On Mon, Sep 7, 2015 at 7:42 AM, Dennis Haynes <d23haynes57@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> Anyway what are you meaning a "mild overheat"? If you lost enough coolant
> for the system to stop working there is either neglect or that leak is
> fairly large. The major concept of the low coolant warning system is to get
> your attention before the cooling system stops working. The ideal is that
> once a leak occurs the warning is activated before the pump inlet can start
> pulling air. Once the pump doesn’t get a full supply of liquid bad things
> begin to happen even if the gauge is not yet indicating a problem.
>
> As for your previous experience with the head gasket, the overheat did not
> cause the failure. The gasket failed, the cooling system stopped working as
> the combustion gasses got into the pump or otherwise stopped the flow. The
> heater circuit is usually the last to stop working with the radiator losing
> its ability to cool way before.
>
> Dennis
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
> Of Don Hanson
> Sent: Sunday, September 6, 2015 3:04 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Oil coolers...The stock ones, are they all the same?
>
> I posted earlier on losing coolant and some mild overheating with my
> inline VW powered Vanagon (84).
>
> At first it appeared to be a leaking hose adjacent to the Oil/coolant
> heat exchanger,,The one that sits between the oil filter filter and the
> block......, but I discovered, on careful examination, a small stream of
> coolant coming out of the side of the cooler-metal itself, right under
> where a hose and cooling pipe has been resting for some time...Must have
> worn through the thin aluminum of the heat exchanger...
>
>
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